


To Fear What You Are

by squanderbird



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Gen, LET ME LOVE YOU, angstfest!, morgana needs more love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-24
Updated: 2012-07-24
Packaged: 2017-11-10 15:52:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 585
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/468025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/squanderbird/pseuds/squanderbird
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She wakes up with fire in her eyes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Fear What You Are

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sabriel75](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sabriel75/gifts).



She wakes up with fire in her eyes. Irises flicker golden, a King Midas glance, and everything she touches could turn to the same colour. Turn to stone, creamy cold and perfect in stillness, enough to make Medusa herself jealous. Turn to blood, to stars, to ash, to anything. If she wanted. If she wanted, and the thought flutters, embryonic, butterfly delicate, as she shivers beneath soft caressing sheets. As she cries, a red-eyed girl in a fine lady's diguise.

Morgana, beloved of the King.   
Morgana, surrogate sister to the Crown Prince.   
Morgana, righteous and wilful in silver water armour.  
Morgana, friend to a kind-eyed maid and a clumsily brave servant.   
Morgana, night-time sorcerer, who lives in the icy shadow of execution. 

She cries, and lets the power congeal inside her. It quiets some, but it's still there, waiting, waiting. 

She is terrified by it. 

* 

She sits in the forest, spirited from a death in a fairytale castle, taken to harness her gift, and she remembers. 

A beautiful Druid, who died for the crime of saying _there is nothing wrong with you, Morgana_. A little boy, whose pale frailty overwhelms her, his cloak billowing out in a velvet rush and his whisper inside her head. A woman with a waterfall of blonde hair, a woman who gives her a cold-skinned bracelet and calls her sister. A blue-eyed servant boy who feeds her poison, who holds her in his arms and she shakes and chokes, who cries hot salt that begs for forgiveness. And Uther, a man who emanates condemnation of her kind, their martyr's blood dripping from his hands and staining his crown scarlet. 

Remembers them well, for hese are those she has to thank for the vicious battle inside of her; for the love, that, and the hatred. 

* 

A final epic battle; her with wild hair and flashing eyes, destruction and creation encircling her hands, and the hatred grows and grows, devouring, winning, until she looks up and they're there: Arthur and his pet sorcerer, their angles sharpened by time. 

For a moment, as she looks at them and they look at her, the years slide back until they're young again. They're young again, and beautiful, Camelot is their home; Morgana doesn't realise what her nightmares mean, and Arthur gives himself airs, seeping arrogance (and the people loved him even then). Gwen isn't a lofty sombre queen in purple and gold, she's Morgana's confidante, and they giggle together over silken dresses sprawled out for choosing. And Merlin isn't her would-be murderer, Merlin isn't the one thing standing between her and a kingdom where magic is studied for the greater good (always for the greater good, always, always). Merlin isn't the feared Emrys, whispered of by the Old Religion. He's just Merlin, and Merlin's just Arthur's servant, just Morgana's friend, just the sweet-eyed boy who brings her bunches of wild flowers, and she misses it, all of it, so much it cuts into her heart - 

(unless you cut your heart out anyway) 

\- until she blinks, and remembers, remembers it well: that she isn't the King's ward, she's Morgana le Fay, Mordred quiet and dangerous by her side. She remembers the lying secrecy, the screams of the condemned, the Camelot that forced her to live in terror of her own self. She remembers, the taste of poison recalled on her tongue, looks not at Arthur (King Arthur, not the Arthur you knew, you lost him long ago) but at the sky, and begins the first attack.


End file.
